


Grief Does Strange Things To People

by enthusiasmgirl



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), Daredevil (TV), Doctor Strange (2016), The Defenders (Marvel TV)
Genre: Angst, Bad Decisions, But Also Human Disaster Foggy Nelson, Don't Let The Tags Scare You Away Because Really This Is A Story About Foggy Becoming A Sorcerer, Five Stages of Grief, Friendship, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Human Disaster Matt Murdock, Implied/Referenced Domestic Violence, Magic, Multiple Pov, Resurrection, Self-Sacrifice, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-25
Updated: 2017-12-25
Packaged: 2019-02-20 03:54:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 6,129
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13138548
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/enthusiasmgirl/pseuds/enthusiasmgirl
Summary: Foggy moves through the stages of grief in his own way. The way that ends up with him selling part of his soul, nearly imploding the universe and ending up in SHIELD custody trying to do everything in his power to bring his friend back from the dead, not realizing how unnecessary it all is. Oops.Matt really is an asshole.





	1. Anger

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Katbelle](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Katbelle/gifts).



> So this is my Secret Santa fic. Once again, for the second year in a row, I've written a really dark angst-fest featuring Foggy, Doctor Strange and ghosts. Go figure. What are the odds?
> 
> I hope that nobody is scared off - Doctor Strange and the SHIELD folks make minimal appearances that require very little knowledge of them to enjoy, and as the tag says this is really just a story about Foggy becoming a motherfucking sorcerer.
> 
> I also hope my recipient enjoys this fic. I apologize that SHIELD is not in it more and that their appearance is a bit vague on specifics, but I unfortunately haven't seen Agents of SHIELD in a few seasons at this point. It's also maybe not as happy as you wanted it to be, but I did try and go for a happy ending. 
> 
> Thanks to dawittiest and prettybirdy979 for having a look at it for me and providing feedback, if not a full and proper beta-read due to timing.
> 
> Happy holidays, everyone.

More than a year. That's how long it had been since Matt had put on the suit that his best friend had handed to him, geared up for war and sacrificed everything. A year in solitude. Thinking. Praying. Reflecting. Reconciling what he thought he knew about himself with the actions he'd taken, with the choices he'd made. Receiving guidance from a very unexpected person.

And now, he was back, returned where he knew he belonged to Hell's Kitchen and ready to fight to reclaim his life. What was left of it. He had been surprised to find just how little was left of it.

The giant of a man he was fighting swung hard at his head, but he dodged the blow easily, tucking down and rolling before quickly popping up to land a vicious punch to the back of his opponent's skull from behind, knocking the man out cold. The three other thieves he'd interrupted mid-heist all closed in on him, surrounding him but wary to make a move having seen what he could do. Afraid of him by reputation. He put his fists up, ready for them.

He shouldn't have bothered.

A smashing sound, like glass shattering right next to his ears, overwhelmed his senses briefly, despite there being no glass anywhere nearby to have caused it. He took a step back, ears ringing with it. When it faded, Matt sensed three bodies moving through the space around him and away from him, but something was wrong. Very wrong.

It was as though he'd hit each of them at once, or something had, and then time had slowed down, suspending them in air so that they fell like feathers, graceful and weightless. Matt realized as he tried to make sense of it that all the noise of the city was also gone, faded away into nothing, the quietest Matt had ever heard it. Muffled. Impossible.

He could feel his own heart begin to beat wildly in his chest as his limbs swayed anxiously. He panicked, confused, trying to focus.

There was someone behind him, with their arms stretched out in front of them, reaching towards Matt and the men as though in control of it all somehow. Their heart also beat quickly in their chest as Matt turned to face them. And as Matt tried to regain his own control over the situation, to mentally place that person and identify them, he realized that the heartbeat was as familiar to him as his own.

"Foggy?" he asked, terrified.

A sigh.

"You are such as asshole," Foggy responded with anger.

And then, nothingness.


	2. Depression

**ONE YEAR EARLIER**

Foggy sat slumped in an uncomfortable wooden chair, unable to focus as he tried to listen to the prosecutor drone on about the facts of the case he was currently supposed to be actively participating in. Blah blah "bloody staircase"... blah blah "blunt force trauma"... blah blah "ten domestic abuse calls to the apartment". It echoed in the cavernous courtroom.

He told himself that it was okay if his attention drifted during opening arguments, although he recognized what a hollow and terrible excuse that was. He knew that he should be listening more, alert, but he was just exhausted. And frustrated. He should have recused himself, he thought to himself for the hundredth time. His client deserved a lawyer who was invested in proving his innocence. He didn't know why Jeri had asked him to handle this case.

Lately, he didn't know why Jeri asked him to take any case if he was being honest with himself. He didn't know why anyone talked to him at all, or why he even bothered to get out of bed most days.

* * *

His parents kept calling him, worried. He stopped picking up after the first time his mother asked him about Matt. He hadn't known what to say. Or how to act. He was paranoid that they would know he was lying to them, and infuriated that he had to.

Would they be upset that he wasn't still putting on the appearance of desperately hoping Matt was still alive? That he wasn't out hanging Missing posters and begging the public to contact the authorities with any information? Should he be holding candlelight vigils? Insisting that Matt just couldn't really be gone?

Being around those who knew the truth didn't make him feel any less strange about it. Were they disappointed that he wasn't crying? Did they need him to hold him while they cried? Or take charge of Matt's estate and erase what remained of his physical existence so that everyone could move on?

He wished that there was some guidebook that existed that told you what to do when your best friend and former partner goes missing and is presumed dead in a building collapse. Instead, he was just left feeling like he was doing everything wrong and everybody could tell.

It was Karen who wrote a story for the Bulletin on the earthquake and the events at Midland Circle that implied that local attorney Matt Murdock had died that night. She'd looked at him a bit funny when he had only been concerned that she make sure that the story didn't connect Matt to the disappearance of Daredevil.

It was Danny Rand who took over the lease for Matt's apartment and hired someone to clean it, who personally ensured that if Matt ever did turn back up, his things would still be there waiting for him. Foggy never visited it. He didn't think he would be able to deal with the fact that the last time he'd been there it had been to retrieve Matt's suit for him.

And it was Jessica Jones who looked into what it would take to have Matt legally declared dead. They couldn't meet the standard of proof required. It would take seven years before they would be able to make Matt's death official. She seemed pissed off when Foggy responded to that news by casually informing her that he guessed that meant they'd hold a memorial service in seven years.

In the meantime, Foggy just... existed. He came into work and did the bare minimum he had to do to not be fired. At night, he went to a bar near the office and nursed a drink in a corner booth, too scared of what might happen if he actually got drunk to do more than that.

For a short time after the night Matt disappeared, he'd taken some comfort in Marci. But then one day she'd marched into his office and asked him why he hadn't said anything to her about Matt, a copy of the Bulletin in her hand. He'd told her that since it didn't have anything to do with her, he didn't think it mattered. She'd look at him like he'd betrayed her somehow, which confused him, and had stormed out in a way that suggested their romantic relationship was over.

And so now work was all he had, and even that only made him think about how disappointed Matt would be in him. Of how the night that Midland Circle went down, it had also taken all of his hopes and dreams for his future with it, burying them so deep that they felt irretrievable.

* * *

His current case was exactly the kind of thing that Matt would have objected to him taking.

His client, David Abramson, had become enraged while in an argument with his wife and beaten her until she fell down their apartment staircase and died. Hogarth, Benowitz and Chao were asked to argue that it was a crime of passion committed by someone not of sound mind at the time. But Abramson struck Foggy as not only very sane, but smug on top of it. To him, it appeared to be a straightforward crime of domestic abuse, a murder committed in the heat of the moment but predicted by a clear pattern of previous violence.

Jeri kept reminding him that the tears Abramson cried for his wife were real, that the man loved his wife and exhibited a deep regret for what he did. But something about the case still sat wrong with Foggy, and he suspected maybe Jeri was projecting. However, he was also past the point of being able to care.

Blah blah "time it took to call 911"... blah blah "Mr. Nelson." Oops. "Mr. Nelson?"

"Yes? Sorry, your honor," Foggy said, embarrassed.

"Are you ready to give your opening statement?"

"Yes, of course," Foggy told the judge, standing up and gathering his papers, flustered. "Sorry," he whispered to his client next to him. He was surprised to see that David Abramson looked very calm. "Don't worry about it," was the response.

As Foggy moved towards the front of the courtroom, preparing himself mentally to appear more assured and confident in front of the jury, the door at the back of the courtroom slammed open unexpectedly.

"WAIT!" came the cry from the doorway.

Foggy's eyes turned, as everyone's did, to the person who now entered, and they widened in shock as he realized who it was.

"Please stop this," the woman said. "My name is Sarah Abramson and you are trying an innocent man for a murder that never happened."

At that, pandemonium broke loose. Officers of the court moved to restrain the woman claiming to be the murder victim. The judge banged his gavel, but it was of no use.

Foggy could only stand there, dumbstruck. He knew it was his client's wife. He'd spent hours preparing for this case, reviewing photo after photo of the couple. Reviewing photo after photo of her body on a morgue table.

As Foggy's mind worked through it while the chaos continued around him, he couldn't help but catch a glimpse of David Abramson still calm and seated, the only person in the room not focused on what was happening behind him. And he was smiling.

* * *

HCB counted what happened as a win. Their client was a free man, his case dismissed for obvious reasons. Well, obvious in one way but incredibly mysterious in others. And, most importantly to Jeri and the firm's partners, they got paid.

Sarah Abramson had explained to everyone involved in the case that she had faked her death to get back at her husband for an affair. None of it was real, she told them. Not the blood, or the body. She had been hiding out in a motel for weeks, had been prepared to run away and take on a new identity.

But her anger had eventually faded, she said. She realized that she loved her husband. She changed her mind about everything, regretted it deeply.

She had been charged with several counts of fraud, which she plead guilty to.

And that should have been the end of the story.

But Foggy knew that it didn't make any sense. He sat in his office for days afterward, poring over the files from the case, carefully re-examining the police reports, the autopsy report, the morgue photos. Listening to the taped statements that David Abramson had provided to them in which he tearfully confessed to arguing with Sarah, to watching her fall down the stairs, to having her blood on his hands.

Sarah Abramson had died. Foggy was certain of that.

But now, she was alive. He was certain of that too. A DNA test had proved it beyond a shadow of a doubt. And that smile Foggy had seen in the courtroom. It haunted him. It was the smile of a man who knew what was happening around him, had orchestrated it somehow.

The Abramson case graduated to the level of obsession. The files moved from his office to a box and then onto his kitchen table. He called every officer involved in the case, every morgue attendant and crime scene investigator, claiming he was doing follow-up. They all said the same thing. The body wasn't fake. They knew it was real. But they also couldn't explain it.

And so Foggy lay awake at night, allowing his mind to wander to everything he had experienced over the last few years. Matt knowing how long ago he'd showered and talking about a world on fire. Ninjas outside his hospital window, clad in black and descending the building on ropes. Claire telling him about a nurse murdered in front of her and pale children with strange chemicals in their blood. A woman who could push a car through the wall of a Chinese restaurant. A man who claimed to have fought a dragon and to be able to channel mystical energy to heal and fight. And Elektra. Hadn't Matt said she died in his arms, just like Sarah Abramson had died in her husband's?

Eventually, Foggy stopped going to work at all. Instead, he just sat in his apartment, grappling with what he was gradually coming to think had happened, conflicted. Because he knew he should be thinking about how dark and terrible the thing that may have happened to Sarah Abramson really was. About the horrible implications at the center of it all, the horrible implications of it even being possible.

Instead, he was buzzing with excitement, with energy, that it was possible.

Finally, he picked up his cell phone and dialed, his hands shaking.

"Hello?"

"Mr. Abramson, it's your attorney Foggy Nelson," he said calmly. "I know what you did. I'm not going to pursue it or tell anyone, but I just need to know how you did it. How did you bring your wife back from the dead?"


	3. Denial

_"You've reached Foggy Nelson. Leave your name and number at the beep and I'll get back to you."_

BEEP

_"Foggy, it's Karen. Are you alright? Danny says that you came by Matt's apartment. That you were looking for something? That you took some things from Matt's trunk? I was surprised to hear that. Is something going on? You know that whatever it is, I'm here. Call me, okay?"_

* * *

"I just don't understand why you wouldn't tell me something so important," Danny said, his voice slightly raised, which for him was practically shouting.

"I didn't realize that who I employed was something that was any of your concern or interest," Jeri replied, frustrated. "I know that you may take up a lot of my time, but you are not actually the boss of me."

"You knew what he was going through," Danny told her, frustrated. "You knew that he just lost his best friend. And you knew that I was a part of that, that I might be concerned. How could you just not say anything?" Danny demanded to know.

Jeri sighed, frustrated. "Alright, fine. I'm sorry. I realize now that I should have told you or Jessica, or maybe even tried to intervene when I saw that he was starting to become... distracted."

"Distracted?" Danny asked in disbelief. "Jeri, he was in mourning. He needed time to heal his soul after something very traumatic. And he needed people to be supportive of him and there for him, not fire him."

"Oh please," Jeri said dismissively. "This was not just a case of him needing a few days to grieve. We caught him stealing files from the office, making inquiries into things officially in a way that he did not have permission to do. There was something else going on with him that he wasn't filling you in on. Which is your problem, not mine."

"What?" Danny asked, surprised.

"Again, not my problem, Danny. He was your friend. Where were you?" Jeri said.

Danny didn't have an answer to that question.

* * *

_"Foggy, Karen again. Thank you for getting back to me, and I know that I haven't exactly been here for you lately. I just... I'm worried. You finally call me back, and it's with a generic how are you? I know that you got fired from HCB. I know that you've been making some strange inquiries lately. Did you tell Ellison that I had said you could look through Ben's files in my office? If he remembered a case Ben worked involving a man who claimed to have healing powers working for a local church? Whatever it is, I don't understand why you didn't think you could just ask me. Call me back, okay. We should meet up. Have a drink. You can fill me in."_

* * *

BANG! BANG! BANG! Jessica's fists nearly slammed the door off its hinges even though she was trying to be gentle with it. "Hey, Nelson, come on! Open up!"

A door creaked open behind her and a bitter looking old lady poked her head out. "Would you shut the hell up. It's nearly midnight!"

Jessica sighed. "Have you seen the man who lives in this apartment? Foggy Nelson?"

There was a snort of laughter. "Lady, he moved out weeks ago."

"Moved out?" Jessica asked, suddenly concerned.

"Yeah, one day he just packed his stuff up and went. So you can stop waking up the whole building and leave."

She rolled her eyes and did as asked, internally starting to panic. Something was very wrong.

* * *

_"I'm sorry. The number you have reached is not in service. Please hang up and try your call again."_

* * *

"Foggy!" Claire said, shocked to see the man everyone had been so worried about lately huddled in a booth at the back of the crowded bar.

"Claire," he said, looking just as surprised to see her, but also nervous. "What are you, uh..."

"What are YOU doing here?" Claire erupted, cutting him off. "Do you have any idea how worried everyone has been about you? After everything?" She slid into the seat across from him and he motioned for her not to, eyes darting around the room.

"It's complicated," he told her.

"I've got time," Claire said. She took him in. He didn't look all that different than when she last saw him. His hair was perhaps a bit longer. He wasn't wearing a suit, and there were tired bags under his eyes. She grew more concerned when she noticed the red-dotted bandage poking out from the sleeve of his Columbia sweatshirt. "Talk," she insisted.

"I can't," he told her. "I just... you wouldn't understand."

"Try me," she said firmly. "Jessica's been tailing you, you know. She says you've been meeting with some pretty shady-looking people, looking into some strange things."

He shook his head. "I don't want you involved."

This alarmed her. "Whatever it is, let me help. Please..." She was interrupted by a throat being cleared behind her. She looked up to see a tall, serious looking man carrying a stack of books standing behind her expecting her to give him her seat. "Can I help you?" she asked. He didn't respond.

"Claire," Foggy said, determination in his voice, "you need to leave."

"Yeah, alright," she finally said. "But you call me, okay? You've got my number."

"Sure thing," he assured her with a hesitant smile. But as she left, Claire suspected it might be the last time she heard from him. She hoped not. From the sidewalk outside, she watched through the window, observing as Foggy exchanged something for the books. What had he gotten himself into?

* * *

"Hello?" Karen asked groggily after having finally found the answer button on the phone, still half-asleep.

"Karen, it's Foggy."

Suddenly, she was wide awake. "Foggy, oh my God. Where the hell have you been?"

"Looking for answers," he told her, "I'm sorry I couldn't talk to you about this sooner, but I wasn't sure if it would work out or if I was just losing my mind..."

"What? Foggy, what answers? What are you talking about?" Karen asked, confused.

"You'll see," he said, "But I need your help. I need you to meet me at the Midland Circle site."

"Wait, what? Foggy, thats... when?" she asked him.

"Now. As soon as possible," he said. "I can't wait anymore, Karen. I need to do this tonight. And I..." he paused for a moment and Karen could hear how scared he sounded, the way his breathing on the other end of the line was just a little too loud and a little too fast. "I don't want to do it alone. And I know how much he'll want to see you."

"He?" She suspected she knew who he was talking about, and now she was the one who was scared.

"I've seen things, Karen. Learned things. He's not gone," he told her, and the certainty in his voice sent a shiver down her spine. "He just needs us to find him. Please. You'll see. Just meet me." The line went dead.


	4. Bargaining

At first, the people of New York City thought it was another earthquake.

Soon though, there was panic in the streets.

* * *

"Fitz, any info yet on the point of origin of all this?" Daisy said into her earpiece, urgency in her voice as she reached out to vibrate the air around her, keeping the surging cloud of dense, strange astral energy floating through the streets and alleyways around them from entering the moving vehicle. She observed a few of the coalescing forms taking shape around her in its shimmering mist separate, shaken apart, dispersed back into the larger whole only to continue to try and re-form.

Up in the front seat, Mack concentrated on just seeing the road in front of him, on trying not to hear the mournful wailing that whatever they were fighting was emitting. "Are we sure we really want to be driving directly into the heart of hell on Earth?" he yelled.

"Got any other ideas to keep it from spreading?" Coulson asked from the seat next to him, as he aimed a large and strange-looking gun, one of Fitz's creations, through an open window and took aim. It released an energy blast that punched a hole in the cloud, but the hole filled in as quickly as it appeared.

"Point taken," Mack said, turning a corner sharply.

"Yeah that's... ooh, that's inter... interesting," Fitz finally replied.

"Interesting or useful?" Daisy asked.

"Maybe both?" Fitz said. "The point of origin appears to be the former site of the Midland Circle building, West 44th and 11th Avenue."

"Wait, Midland Circle? The building that triggered the earthquake in the city earlier in the year? And then collapsed?" Coulson asked, curious.

"The same, yeah," Fitz said. "You know, they said that the Daredevil might have went down with it. It was all quite mysterious."

"I remember," Coulson said. "We looked into it, didn't we?"

Next to him, Mack and Daisy shrugged. Coulson fired his weapon again, a futile effort that mostly served to make him feel in control. They turned another corner, this time with a destination in mind.

"Yeah," Coulson said, "Now I remember. We did. The NYPD told us they'd handled it."

"Apparently not," Daisy said, as the cloud generated a form that looked altogether too human for her to be comfortable obliterating it.

The air around them thickened as they drove, the streets empty as crowds had fled indoors in fear, windows shut and boarded up, doors locked. It swarmed around them, its cries unearthly and unnerving, spreading and searching. None of them wanted to think about what it was searching for.

Finally they reached the edge of the construction site, Mack slamming on the brakes and all of them looking at each other, breath collectively held knowing they'd have to exit the relative safety of the van.

"Anything on what it actually is, Fitz?" Daisy asked.

"Yeah," Fitz said, "but... but you won't... you won't like it."

"Don't tell me," Coulson said.

"Magic," Fitz said at the same time that Daisy and Mack did.

"I hate that we're calling it that now," Coulson said as they slid the side doors open, weapons out.

Thankfully, it seemed as though the air itself was breathable and the cloud not entirely invasive, kept at bay by Daisy's outstretched arms continuing to produce vibrations at just the right frequency. But that didn't make it any less unsettling to feel it pulling at their clothes, caressing their limbs and pushing them slightly back as they waded through it towards the construction site ahead.

They couldn't talk without yelling, the wailing around them had become so deafening.

Finally, they spotted something ahead. "Is that...?" Daisy yelled, hoping to be heard.

"A person," Mack said, surprised. As the cloud intensified, they could all make out a clear eye in the storm, a column of energy where it all seemed to be emerging from. And at the center of it, there was definitely the outline of a human body, writhing, suspended in the air by the force of everything going on around them.

"Sir? Maam?" Coulson called out, gun now squarely aimed in the direction of whoever it was. Suddenly, he felt a yank as the weapon's direction was turned, felt hands tugging him around to face the opposite direction. It was a blonde woman, distraught and angry.

"Don't," she begged him, crying. "Please don't shoot him. Don't kill him. He didn't mean to." She was hysterical. "God, Foggy... He was only trying... you can't." She coughed, trying to speak as she was pulled away from them by the force of the energy swirling around everything.

Mack stopped beside them, and Coulson didn't indicate for him to press forward. Daisy continued towards the column, but she was clearly having difficulty continuing to protect all of them.

"Get her to the van," Coulson yelled to Mack, gesturing to the woman, and he turned his gun towards the air around Daisy, firing bursts off so that she could keep going. Daisy looked back and, seeing that Mack and the woman were safe, began focusing all of her vibrations on the column, clearing herself a path through it.

Finally, a man came into view. "Sir?" Daisy asked. He was clearly overwhelmed and crying, barely able to move.

"Foggy," Coulson said. "Is that your name?"

"Please," Foggy was finally able to say. "Help."

"How?" Daisy asked him. "What can we do, Foggy? How can we help you?"

"Matt," Foggy said. "I couldn't... I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."

"It's okay," Daisy said, realizing what the cloud was, the figures she had been seeing in it and what they meant. "I'm sure he understands. But how do we stop this?" She tried to target the vibrations around him, but she knew that at a certain point she would shake him apart from the inside if she wasn't careful.

"Do it," he told them, eyeing Coulson's gun. "It's me. I caused this. End it."

So Coulson took aim. And he did.


	5. Acceptance

"Three weeks," Stephen said, infuriated by the calm assertiveness of the man in front of him. "I offer to work with you in spite of your very unsavory reputation as, essentially, Nazis and war criminals, and you still stonewall me for three weeks before finally telling me that you _know_ who was responsible for what happened at Midland Circle? After all the help I provided in getting the entire mess cleaned up?"

"Excuse me, Mr. Strange..." Coulson tried to say, but Stephen moved to interrupt him. "Sorry, Dr. Strange," Coulson continued without needing the full prompt, "I certainly understand that you feel that you have some authority in this matter as the... what do you call it... Wizard Supreme?"

"Sorcerer Supreme," Stephen corrected, annoyed "and I would thank you not to take the title so lightly, Agent..."

"Coulson," came the reply. "And it's Director, since you're all about respecting titles. And as I was saying, I understand feeling as though we cut you out, but we needed time to conduct our own investigation and gather our own facts before we felt comfortable reaching out to you with information that is, as I'm sure you can imagine, highly classified."

Stephen scoffed at this. "And now I suppose you need my help, then? As you always seem to in matters that are beyond your comprehension and which you really should not be meddling in at all."

Coulson sighed. "Yes," he conceded.

This reaction was a surprise. "Yes to what?"

"Yes to needing your help," came the reply, "and yes to this being beyond our comprehension. I need you to know that I asked you here against the recommendation of others. But we genuinely need you. Please."

Stephen sighed, knowing that if he continued to be angry it would now only make him appear petty. "Fine. Who are they?"

Coulson performed what Stephen considered a different kind of magic, manipulating a holographic projection to display an image of an unassuming looking man in his mid-30's standing beside another man, one clearly blind due to the sunglasses and cane. The photo was casual, taken in a bar. They looked happy.

"That's the thing," Coulson said, "from what we can gather, he's nobody. We expected to find someone with some links to your world, or maybe to Asgard or the Inhumans. But from everything we can tell, he's just a lawyer. His friend and former partner, the other man in this photo? He died last year, an accidental victim of the Midland Circle collapse. Had the misfortune to be the lawyer for Jessica Jones, you know, the P.I. hero?"

"I've heard of her," Stephen confirmed. "So this man, this..."

"Franklin Nelson," Coulson fills in, "But he goes by Foggy."

"This Franklin Nelson," Stephen continued, "loses his partner and friend in the collapse. And in his grief, he opens the doors to the Astral Plane and nearly implodes several dimensions including this one. And you still think he's nobody?"

"He told us that, actually. And our background checks confirmed it," Coulson said. "Don't get me wrong, he's a good lawyer. He's taken on some interesting cases. But nothing in his past indicates that he would be capable of something like this."

"You'd be surprised what people are capable of," Stephen said. "Where is he now?"

Coulson did something to the display and it changed, now showing what appeared to be a very secure prison cell. But it did not contain what Stephen would have expected.

The cell was... well, it was raining. Water droplets splattered the lens of the camera, and everything in the room was soaking wet. A small portal was on open on one wall of the small cell, with items occasionally falling sideways through it and slamming themselves into the opposite wall, drowning the cell's occupant knee deep in metal parts and junk in addition to the water. The man himself was huddled against one wall, looking vacant and lost and very much like a drowned cat, but with his entire body seeming to pulsate with an energy very familiar to Stephen. It was the same energy that he himself had been taught to control and harness under the Ancient One. To Stephen's great shock, the man appeared to have the beautiful orange shimmering language of powerful and dangerous magic written on his skin and moving at a furious pace, spells writing themselves. To what purpose, Stephen didn't know. He assumed that Franklin Nelson didn't either.

"Why have you imprisoned him?" Stephen asked Coulson.

"What?" Coulson said, surprised. "Isn't it obvious? Besides the fact that he, you know, nearly tore the universe apart?"

And just like that, Coulson realized he was talking to himself. And that another person was now in the cell on the display.

"Mr. Nelson," Stephen said as he stepped through the door his sling ring created, arms up in defense in case he was attacked, "I promise not to hurt you. My name is Dr. Stephen Strange and I'm here to help."  
As Foggy turned his head to face him, Stephen saw mad desperation in his eyes. "Sure," came the exasperated greeting. "Okay," with a shrug.

"Okay?" Stephen asked him, in awe, observing how powerful the man's magic was in person. "Do you have any idea what you are doing right now? What you are capable of?"

The response he got was unexpected. Loud, cackling laughter. "Not really. It doesn't matter. I only wanted to bring my friend back. And it turns out, he wasn't even dead. So whatever, man. If you can turn this off, I'll do whatever you want at this point."

He let Stephen approach and lay his hands on him. And Stephen did turn it off. But he vowed in that moment to also eventually help to turn it back on. The right way.

Because Stephen Strange knew better than anyone that sometimes it took losing everything and thinking your life was over to understand that it was really just beginning.


	6. Was All That Grief For Nothing?

As Matt regained consciousness, he reached out with his senses to acclimate himself, determine where he was. He was lying on his couch. He was in his own apartment just as he'd left it. And there was Foggy, silently crying and angry, sitting in the chair across from him. History repeating itself.

For a moment, Matt wondered, hoped in fact, that maybe it had all been just a dream. Or maybe he had time traveled back to that moment in time and would get to redo it, that moment when Foggy first found out who he really was. But no. He wasn't that lucky.

"What did you do?" Matt asked him, sitting up. He was surprised at how good he felt, how restored, for someone who had been knocked out. He reached out with his senses more precisely, trying to feel Foggy out, to make sure his friend was alright. He seemed surprisingly normal, if tense.

"What did I do?" Foggy asked him after a moment, incredulous.

"You weren't here," Matt told him calmly. "When I came back. When I was ready to come back, to finally try and make things right. You were just gone. Karen blamed me. She said that something had happened, but she didn't want to talk about it. 'What Foggy did for you,' she said. But nobody would tell me."

"What did _you_ do?" Foggy asked, angrily. "Where were you Matt? You let us all think you were dead! You let us all think you had killed yourself!"

If Matt had wanted to time travel before, he really did now. He didn't think it was possible for Foggy to be more furious than he was the night he found out about Daredevil. But the anger he heard now was unrestrained. Pure. Honest. He didn't respond. He knew he deserved it.

"Tell me!" Foggy said forcefully, and suddenly Matt was talking without even realizing it, telling Foggy everything as if compelled, barely taking a breath.

He told him about waking up in the church to his mother's voice, calming him. Guiding him.

He told him about his feelings of failure at being both Matt Murdock and Daredevil, and the way that he didn't think he could face either one again.

He told him how much he missed it all in spite of himself. Missed the law. Missed the rooftops of Hell's Kitchen. And missed Foggy, more than anything.

He told him how he returned hoping to atone, only to find that nobody was willing to hear it. They either accepted him while burying their own anger towards him, grateful to have him back. Or they were gone, like Foggy, with nobody being able to say where to or why.

When he finished, he was shaking, overwhelmed by everything he'd just revealed and filled with an energy he couldn't place, didn't know what to do with. And Foggy was sobbing.

"I'm sorry," Foggy told him, "I shouldn't have done that. I shouldn't have done any of it. I just..."

And Matt remembered the rooftop, suddenly. Remembered Foggy in control. Remembered how terrified he'd been. " _What did you do?_ " Matt asked again, uncertainty sitting in the pit of his stomach.

"I didn't know who I was without you," Foggy confessed.

And it was Matt's turn to listen.

And Matt's turn to sob.

"Do you hate me?" Foggy asked him, when it was all out in the open.

"Do you hate me?" Matt asked in return, worn down.

"I did," Foggy said. "But at a certain point I realized that you didn't make me do any of it. I made choices. I told myself that I was doing everything for you. But I wasn't. Not really. And ultimately I have to live with the consequences of all of it."

"Me too," Matt said. "I'm sorry, Foggy."

They sat there for a moment, unsure what to do next. "So what happens now?" Matt finally asked.

"I don't know," Foggy replied, sniffling. "But it's nice to not know together."

Matt nodded and smiled, feeling strangely more okay than he had in a long time. "So..." he couldn't help but ask, "magic? Really?"


End file.
